


Oh, beauty, are you not enough? Why am I crying after love? -Sara Teasdale

by orphan_account



Series: 101 Quotes [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-28
Updated: 2014-08-28
Packaged: 2018-02-15 02:52:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2213004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly and Sherlock.<br/>A story in five parts.</p><p>“Have you ever wanted something so bad, you ache for it every night? And then, when it's finally going to happen, when it's on the verge of becoming real, your heart is filled with this desperate anxiety and nervousness, because it's not going to be as good as you always thought?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh, beauty, are you not enough? Why am I crying after love? -Sara Teasdale

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine. 
> 
> Rated M because I don't know, it has some extremely light smut.
> 
> If you read this and also happen to work in entertainment (yes, Graham Norton, I AM looking at you!), please, be so kind and do NOT use my work. I repeat, I do NOT give my consent for you to use this!  
> Also, if you are, by some weird coincidence, Moffat/Gatiss/Famous, do not read whatever I write. If you read this...close the page. Now. It's not too late yet. Because my writing is horrible and you will hate me. And yourself for reading.

**I**

Is there a way of living life without hurting anyone, including yourself? It's a question many people have asked themselves throughout the short span of time they spend walking around on the hemisphere of our lonely blue planet. And Sherlock knows. No, no there is not. Life is bound to be painful and breathtaking; heartbreaking and beautiful. He has known this since he was little. Six years old and standing at the shore of England. Waves rolling onto the shore, crashing, collapsing, returning. An endless cycle of beauty, destruction and rebuilding. He has always loved water. The beautiful play of light in the _greenblueopalturquoisegrey_ mix that is called the ocean, white foam decorating the waves like curls and flowercrowns. That day the sea was stormy and the air filled with salty breezes that lift his curls and played with them like a mother does.

The ocean coloured itself in shades of grey; a dark and lugubrious picture painted with the most sombre tones an artist might find, might use to express his deepest sorrow, excruciating pain. The sky overcast. The edge of the world right in front of a boy that does not even understand what he is seeing and why it happens and _how_.

“Look at this,” his mother says while she sits down next to him, arms around her son. Her little boy. “It's going to rain today, Sherlock.”

And he looks up at her with endless questions in his eyes _“how do you now?”, “why does it rain?”_ , _“why can't it stay like this?”_ and to his own surprise, he actually voices that last question. It's nothing more than a whisper, almost drowned out by the howling wind. She still hears him. She frowns and smiles upon him, stroking his curls out of his face with a gesture that shows more affection than words ever could. “Because, Sherlock, that's just how it goes. Everything changes. And yes, this may look beautiful, but beauty is a sign of danger, my dear. Always remember that. When life looks and feels like it's at its most beautiful state, something cruel is going on behind the scenes. Something you can't see, but it will devour you.”

And he remembers.

 

He remembers it when he's 7 and his brother kisses his battered and bruised knees while he holds his hand steady in his own.

He remembers it when he's 11 and his brother leaves for university and there's no one left to wipe away his tears when his knees are bleeding and there's no one to kiss his wounds and hold his hands.

He remembers it when he's 15 and his brother catches him with his hands on the small chest of the neighbour's daughter. Lips pressed against hers. Mycroft shooing her out of the door with vivid motions of his hands and telling Sherlock he's too young.

He remembers it when he's 17 and the needle penetrates his vein with a sharp sting, only to be followed by liquid light being injected into his veins. Numbing his brain. Silence at last.

He remembers it when he's 23 and his mother dies. A closed hearse and golden handles. Flowers and candles on fresh piles of earth.

He remembers it when he's 26 and he meets Molly and she tells him _he's beautiful._

 

And Sherlock knows beautiful is probably the word to describe him, because he learned, by life and lessons, that beauty equals destruction. It does not last and it takes everything down while falling. Pretty things are often lonely and breathtaking experiences will come to a harsh end.

 

Molly thinks he's beautiful, and he destroys her.

 

**II**

It's not wanted. It's not something Sherlock aimed to achieve and strived for. He did not want to break Molly's heart. It started out so innocent; incidental touches and eye contact followed by fiery blushes. Red colouring Molly's cheeks like the rouge she applies to make him notice her.

Foolish girl. He always notices her. _Always._ How on earth, in heaven and in the depths of hell could he not? She's a radiant sun, glimmering, dazzling, blinding. She's purgatory, life and everything in between. The red smear of too expensive lipstick on her lips, a frail braid like Caesar's crown out of golden leaves resting upon her head.

She is beautiful, but beauty hurts and he has been hurt enough.

 

The highs that were quickly followed by earth-shattering phases of depression and hate. The lovers that made love blossom in his ribcage until his back broke and then left him with the blood of his broken heart sticking to his hands. Because love is beautiful, and, shit, love's a cold-blooded killer. It breaks a person in the most harshest ways possible and leaves them on the edge of losing themselves in the flooding pain. Waves crashing against cliffs, never fully covering them, never drowning. It seeps into lives like light into the night sky at dawn; unwanted, inevitable, unstoppable.

 

And she tries, she tries so hard to be everything he needs and wants. But the more she tries the more he pushes and the more it feels like _she's pulling_. It's breaking her and he's the reason and he never wanted this to happen.

 

She leaves the morgue at night with a fluttering heart and the childish wish to run into him on the streets of London. She arrives in the morning with the shadow of her dreams still imprinted on her mind, like the contours of a loved one's head leaves its own pressed into soft pillows. Ghost touches still caressing her back and the echo of his lips biting her ear still causing her nerves to tingle. The taste lingers on her tongue until she washes it away with coffee too bitter and too hot. And she waits, she waits until he arrives and makes a mean remark and shatters all her hopes, only to go home with the same wishes and the same want.

 

An endless cycle of hope, destruction and rebuilding.

 

Sherlock does not want to love any more, no. He fears the best moments the most; with a racing heart and lips pressed together. Because it comes to an end, and when you're high, you fall deep.

 

He swears he will never climb high again.

 

**III**

John has fallen in love, and he saw through her. The carefully build wall of cold ice surrounding her heart and her mind, but he read her. Like an open book.

She's going to break John. Leave him broken on the ground like a jigsaw puzzle, and pieces will be lost during the process of reconstruction. Disappear into thin air. Because every time you fall apart, you lose yourself. And some parts never return.

 

On their wedding day he allows himself to smile. Molly's there with Tom, and yes, Sherlock can see the resemblance and yes, of course, it's the steady push of hands carrying the name _guilt_ and _shame_ that drive him to dance with her as the music becomes loud and heavy and Tom has already left to feed her cat.

 

But he can't blame the guilt and the shame when their lips touch in one of the rooms upstairs and his hands roam over her body. He can't blame anything but himself when he bites her lip and pushes her body against the wall, thigh resting between her legs.

He's the only one to blame as she groans into his mouth and moves her body on top of his in a rhythm that makes his hips stutter and his hands tremble, the carpet pattern imprinting itself onto his back. She silences his moan with her mouth, takes his hands and lays them upon her body.

She feels better than he ever expected her to, and he can't keep his hands from wandering.  
Fingertips pressing on the bones of her hips, her ribcage so clearly visible underneath the white, creamy skin so he can count every single bone while his fingers run over them, her breasts, small and firm. Fitting into his hands perfectly.

Her head falls back, mouth stretched into a cry she will never voice, her long, soft hair falling down, caressing his thighs.

And in that exact moment, that moment filled with bliss and ecstasy and lust.

 

She's beautiful.

 

 

**IV**

When Mary shoots him he thinks _this is it. This is the end_. _This is what it's all coming down to._ Rather pathetic, ending on the floor of an office building in the middle of London. Shot in the chest by the pregnant wife of your best friend.

“You wouldn't kill me,” he had said. So sure. So cocky.

She tried though. She did. She shot. Pulled the trigger and made him fall down in a mess of flailing limbs and the taste of copper on his tongue. The ECG a straight line accompanied by a long beep.

 

Molly's there in his mind palace to guide him through.

Molly, his brother, Anderson.

 _Molly_.

 

Perhaps his mother wasn't right, because he stayed away from it all. Stayed away from the pretty things, the beauty. The drugs and the nameless people to warm his bedsheets and his bones. He never talked to Molly after that night, fled whenever he saw her like the pathetic human being he is.

 

Perhaps his mother was wrong.

 

**V**

When he wakes up, he is shocked to be alive. Shocked and afraid and he feels like his last thoughts before they were sucked into the morphine induced void were the most important ones he ever had.

Perhaps his mother was wrong.

Life is cruel; harsh and a bitch. And beauty and destruction go hand in hand, but that's the way it is.

Maybe not all things come to an end. Maybe he is allowed to experience it.

 

He goes to the morgue five days later. Molly is sitting there alone. Again. She always works alone. Surrounded by darkness that occasionally is lightened by the faint glimmer of electric lights belonging to expensive medical equipment and a small lamp on her desk.

She looks at him.

With sadness.

With pain.

With softness. So much softness.

“I came to talk,” he whispers, hands clutching the fabric of his jeans. She nods slowly as he walks up to her, sitting down into the chair next to hers. An emptiness spreads through his chest like a disease, it turns his bones to ice and his skin to crawl.

He just sits there. Sits there with no words to say what he thinks and feels.

He still tries.

 

“Have you ever wanted something so bad, you ache for it every night? And then, when it's finally going to happen, when it's on the verge of becoming real, your heart is filled with this desperate anxiety and nervousness, because it's not going to be as good as you always thought?” Sherlock asks, voice cracking, fingers drumming an unknown pattern against his thigh. A pathetic display of nervousness.

She stays silent for a while, doesn't even do as much as to look at him. Brown eyes fixating loose particles soaring in the dry, cold air. A scintillating play of light and dust and forms, a shadow theatre, shadows and mirrors.

“All the time.” And it's the truth. He can hear it in the light quiver of her soft voice, he can see it in the ways her fingers start trembling as the words leave her mouth.

He wants to comfort her, wants to lay his hand on her shoulder, tracing her collarbone with a stroke of his thumb. And he wants to soothe her. With words, with actions. With all things left unsaid and unfinished. Because the play that has been theirs to star in, the play that has been written into their lives by their actions and words, is finally coming to an end.

He wishes he could voice it, bring the thoughts to life and live them through. From beginning to end, dust to dust.

“I am afraid,” he whispers. Silence. Particles. Dust.

“Of what?”

He swallows, running his hand through his hair. “Loving.”

She looks at him, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. Lips quivering, salty trails on soft cheeks.

He stretches out his arm, cups her cheek. Thumb wiping away the rivulets filled with infinite sadness, other hand following suit. He wants to lean in. He wants. He needs.

He does.

The second time they kiss, it feels just as good as it did the first time. Only this time, Sherlock knows he won't run away.

He won't end this.

And he hopes, he hopes she won't either.

 

**VI**

Love, it breaks people, kills people, drives them insane.

Leaves them on the verge of losing it with hands buried in hair and its teeth leave marks onto people's very bones. Smoke burning lungs, the reason for the decay that takes place underneath the skin.

But it also soothes, heals, calms.

It makes light glow in places that have seen nothing but darkness, it calms the heart and treats the wounds. Battered knees kissed by older brothers and curls stroked back by the hand of a caring mother. The searing touch of a lover's hand where no one might have ever touched before.

It's a thin line between beauty and destruction, between love and hate. Life and death.

But he can walk it. With her.

He will walk it. With her.

Until their skin wrinkles and their hair turns grey and death reclaims them both.

Because she will be there when it hurts. And she will be there when it doesn't.

She will be there, and that's all he needs to prove his mother wrong.

 

 


End file.
